


you changed the melody every time

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family Reunion, Fix-It, Gen, Long-Lost Relative, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EP 26, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death, in which the author frantically stretches the time between vm and m9 to make this fic make sense, pre-widomauk somewhere in there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 07:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: Kashaw looks down at his son’s sightless red eyes, the gaping wound in his chest. He’s going to find the fucker who did this, and he’s going to—well, he’s going to let his boy have a go at them before he does. But first he’s got to bring him back.or: what happens when Nott finds a gate stone in Molly's coat pocket.





	you changed the melody every time

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the Hamilton musical's "Stay Alive (Reprise)". here's to hoping this turns out better than that one did!

They’re grieving when Nott says, “Uh, Caleb?”

Caleb somehow manages to pull himself together enough to say, “Uh, _ja_ , Nott?” He looks over towards her, and tries not to look at the still and bloodied form of Mollymauk, eyes still open.

“I think I found something magical,” says Nott, pulling a stone out of one of Molly’s many coat pockets. Caleb sucks in a breath when he sees it—the way it’s carved, meticulously so, the runes etched onto one side, means that not only is it magical, it’s—

“What the hell is that?” says Beau. “Some kinda fancy lucky charm?”

Maybe Molly thought of it that way. Certainly Caleb doesn’t know why else he’d hold on to something so powerful, or why else would he just keep it in his _pocket_ , but he sees suddenly a sliver of hope. He walks forward, and plucks the stone out of Nott’s grasp.

“It’s a gate stone,” he says. “Whoever has the other half—”

“—could be summoned,” says Beau. “Well, the fuck are we waiting for? Do it! We can’t—We can’t _leave him_.”

They could, is the thing. Caleb’s certainly considered it, in a cold, calculating way, but Beau had screamed to the sky and knelt over Molly and told him _don’t you do this you fucker don’t you do this_ , and Nott had smoothed Molly’s hair back absently and said _you danced with me_.

Keg didn’t say anything. She does now: “What’s the guarantee that you won’t be summoning someone worse?”

And that is true. Molly maybe didn’t know the value of what he was carrying, but Caleb wonders if the man he used to be did. For the moment he considers Keg’s advice, and looks down at the gate stone. Then he looks at Molly, on the ground, so unnaturally still.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t _fair_. They’re lesser already without Jester, Fjord and Yasha. They’re a fractured mess without Molly, too, and Caleb hates that it’s taken them this long to figure it out.

He looks up at Beau, who says, “Molly would do this for any of us. You know that.”

It’s enough for him to decide.

He shuts his eyes and concentrates on the stone. _Help us,_ he thinks, desperately, Molly’s grin and laugh and lilting voice still floating through his head. They have lost enough people already. They cannot afford to lose another. _Please._

The stone glows white-hot in his hand—

\--

Kashaw blinks.

He has two gate stones on him, at all times. One takes him directly to Z, whenever one of them has to go off on their own and do something that suddenly requires backup at some point. The other is—

It’s been a long time since his son used the stone.

So it’s a surprise when he feels that one humming in his pocket one day. _Help us,_ comes the whisper, and it might not be his son’s, but he grabs the stone anyway. He holds it in his hand, heart already dropping into his stomach like so much lead weight.

One moment he’s in his home. The next he’s somewhere in a snow-covered clearing, next to a dirty, shabby man with what’s _probably_ red hair and a beard, a dwarf woman with a lot of stubble, a masked little girl pointing a crossbow at him, a blue-clad monk woman falling into a defensive stance, and—

_No. No. Nonononononono—_

There’s his boy, on the ground, staring sightlessly up at the sky. Kashaw collapses to his knees, checks desperately for a pulse at his wrist, at his neck. Nothing.

And he’s already growing cold.

“What _happened_ here?” he barks. “What the hell did you do to my boy?!”

“Your what,” says the monk.

“ _Who are you?_ ” snarls the little masked girl. Kashaw squints at her. Oh, boy. He’d better keep this one far away from Shorthalt.

“Can you heal him?” says the shabby-ass hobo, all business. Kashaw gets the funny feeling he’s talking to someone a _lot_ like him and Percy—all business on the surface, a roiling mess of emotions and self-hatred underneath.

“He’s _way past_ healing,” says the dwarven woman.

“How long has he been like this?” snaps Kashaw. “What the hell is going on here—”

“Just a few hours,” says the monk, voice scraped raw, “so you better get going, we need him _back_.”

Too long for a simple Revivify, then. Kashaw drags out the diamonds from his pouch, pours them over his boy’s scarred chest. _What have you gotten up to?_ he thinks, somewhere past the grief and the desperation. “One of you better keep an eye out,” he warns.

“I’ll do it,” the dwarf volunteers. “I don’t—I’ve got nothing to contribute. This is magic stuff, I don’t know that.”

So she goes, and the other three stay.

Kashaw looks down at his son’s sightless red eyes, the gaping wound in his chest. He’s going to find the fucker who did this, and he’s going to—well, he’s going to let his boy have a go at them before he does. But first he’s got to bring him back.

So he shuts his eyes and reaches out.

\--

Molly’s father—because there’s no mistaking that primal fear and horror and desperation—drops to his knees, and cradles Molly’s head in his hands.

His hands that then glow, the way Jester’s does when she heals people, but there’s something different about this. Maybe it’s the way the scars on the man’s arm start to glow too, with a light that drives Caleb to shut his eyes for a moment. Scars like Molly’s.

Molly, who’s suddenly glowing dimly.

The man says, “You guys are gonna have to help me out here—it’s been a long time since he and I talked.”

“How?” says Nott.

“Call him back,” says the man, “ _convince_ him to come back.”

Caleb’s not sure Molly needs all that much convincing, but then Nott steps forward. She draws a silk flower from somewhere in her clothes, and kneels down next to Molly. Then she tucks it in behind his horns.

“Remember when we won that drinking contest back in Hupperdook?” she says. “Remember when we danced? We had flowers in our hair and you spun me around so much I almost puked on you.” She smiles under the mask, the corners of her lips pulling upwards just enough to be seen. “I know we’ve had our differences. I know we don’t always see eye to eye. But I just want you to know: we need you back. The Mighty Nein isn’t as ironic when there’s just _three_ of us.”

Beau steps forward next to Nott, kneels down, and takes off one of her jade bracelets. “Hey, Molly,” she says, “fuck you _so much_ , you asshole. Why’d you have to go and do that, huh? I had it. I _had it_. And now you’re fucking gone and—” She breaks, keels over and tries to gasp in air through her heaving sobs. “Don’t you fucking _do this_. You come back, you obnoxious shithead. You _come back_. If not for me, god knows you hate me, if not for me, do it for Yasha. She’s—I know she’s important to you, and I know she should be the one who’s here, but she’s not and I am, so I’m gonna tell you to come back for her, for us, because who the fuck else is going to help us kick these fuckers’ asses and get her and Fjord and Jester out, huh? _No one._ ”

They had to take away Molly’s coat, the stupid rainbow coat that he’d loved so much, because it was so bloodstained and awful now. Caleb, absurdly, thinks— _he’ll be cold, when he wakes up._

He steps forward, takes his coat off, and drapes it over Molly.

“Mollymauk,” he says, softly. “I—am not good at this, you know that. I am not as charming as Fjord, and I’m afraid I have not done a lot of convincing in years. But I—did you know, I always thought you were something else? Not always favorably. But you were so, so— _sure_ of yourself, despite everything, despite not even having been Molly for two years. I am, I’ll admit, envious of that. I am not a good person, and the last time I was sure of anything people died.” He smooths some of Molly’s hair back. “But you are a good person. You brave, foolish _arschloch_. You have to come back. We are just a trio of untrusting assholes without you, so you _must_ come back. _Please._ ”

Molly had pressed a kiss to his forehead once, tender and soft. Caleb, hesitantly, mimics the motion now, pressing his lips to cooling flesh. “Time for this later, Mr. Mollymauk,” he says. “Come back to us.”

The cleric cracks an eye open now, watching the three of them with suspicion. Molly is floating now under his hands, glowing ever brighter with divine light. He shuts it again, and says, “Back away now, and _shut your eyes_.”

They do.

Just before Caleb shuts his eyes he sees a flash of _light_ —

\--

Molly wakes up, and crashes back onto the ground with an undignified yelp.

He sucks in a lungful of air. “The fuck,” he says, out loud, staring up at four tear-covered faces, three familiar and one decidedly not. “The _fuck_ just happened.”

“Molly!”

“Shithead!”

“Mollymauk!”

“Ow!” says Molly, as suddenly he’s hugged by three people at once. “Ow, ow, _ow_ , watch the ribs!”

“Okay, everyone back off,” the cleric barks, harsh and a little raw-sounding. Like he’d cried, just now. “Let me do a little more work.”

Caleb backs off immediately, and it’s only then that Molly looks down at himself and realizes: _Caleb’s_ coat is draped over him, a shabby, grimy thing just a little too narrow in the shoulders. There’s a jade bracelet on his wrist, and a silk flower tucked behind his ear.

The cleric scoots forward, and says, “All right, hold still—Molly, was it?”

“Mollymauk Tealeaf, yeah,” says Molly, and he’s so stupidly happy he even remembers that. “You, big guy?”

The cleric flinches back, but seems to rally himself. In the moonlight, he can see threads of grey shot through the man’s dark hair, especially at the temples. “Kashaw,” he says. “People just call me Kash.”

“My friends call me Molly,” Molly offers. “And I—seeing as you’ve apparently healed me quite a bit, I think that makes us friends.”

The cleric doesn’t answer. Molly sees the cuts on the man’s arm glow when he puts a palm on Molly’s shoulder, and Molly sucks in a sudden breath of air when he feels— _everything_ knitting back together.

Then Kashaw’s hand drops, and he stands up and steps back, shivers in his shirt and trousers. Now that he’s not so close to Molly, it’s obvious that he hadn’t come prepared for a fight. He hadn’t even come prepared for the road.

“Where’s my coat?” Molly asks. “Come on, I know one of you took it.”

“For patching up,” says Caleb. “It’s, um. You wouldn’t want to see it right now.”

“Nonsense, it’s _my_ coat—”

“Holy fucking shit _you aren’t dead_ ,” says Keg, staggering back to camp. She looks slightly worse for the wear, a fresh cut on her cheek where someone’s knife tried to stab her. “I thought—thank fucking _god_ , you had that stone in your pocket, of all people to summon you got your _dad_ —”

Molly stares at her, the memory bubbling up now to the surface. He’d been doing so well, not looking at it, and now here it is, the cold hard truth: _you were dead._

Then the rest of it hits: his lucky charm in his pocket, the cleric they’ve gotten.

Then he croaks out, “Oh. That.”

\--

“Is this normal?” says Keg, as Caleb’s taken Molly off to the side to keep him from having a full-blown panic attack in front of Kashaw and the other two—Beau and Nott, apparently.

Nott’s taken the mask off to start drinking out of a flask. Kashaw’s pretty sure she’s been at it five minutes with no signs of stopping any time soon.

Beau sighs. “Fuck if any of us know what that is,” she says, before she turns to Kashaw. “You said he was your boy?”

“He is,” says Kashaw, stressing the present tense. “Me and Z, we haven’t—talked to him, in a while. We had a big argument the last time we did, I thought he’d thrown the gate stone away.”

“When was that argument?” Beau says, leaning on her staff.

“Two years ago,” says Kashaw, the memory of his son’s snarling words bubbling back up to the surface. So opposite to the man he sees now, tattooed and cheerful up to the point someone told him point-blank what was going on. “After he started that side group of his, the Tomb Takers.” He spits the name out like it’s venom in his mouth.

“Yeah, about that,” says Beau, shifting a little.

“He doesn’t remember,” says Nott, bluntly, screwing the cap back onto her flask. “He said he woke up after a ritual gone wrong and didn’t remember anything but _empty_.” She offers it to him, and says, “We found him in a circus, by the way.”

Kashaw stares at her, this little green goblin girl. Then he takes the flask from her fingers and takes a sip.

It tastes _horrible_ , and he spits it out onto the ground.

“How do you _drink_ this?” he asks.

“A lot,” says Nott, with a shrug, and Kashaw gapes at her, feeling a familiar headache coming on. He’s only ever felt it around Vox Machina, before today.

“And you aren’t dead?” Kashaw says.

“It tastes better with a little sugar,” Beau offers. She sounds almost like Keyleth, then, except Beau watches Kashaw like she thinks he could still be a threat to their little group. She isn’t wrong, technically. Vesh isn’t completely gone.

“Wuss,” says Keg, but she’s smiling a little at Beau, the smile of the smitten and aroused. Beau flips her off in response.

If only Z were here. He imagines she’d have something pithy in response to all of this. Certainly she’d know what to do in case of an amnesiac son.

Speaking of which, Molly’s wandering back now, with Caleb pressed to his side. He looks slightly better now, the color having come back to his cheeks.

“So,” he says, trying for a smile. It looks shaky and brittle, like he’s honestly trying his best to be okay. “Uh. Hi, I guess? Sorry about your son.”

Kashaw had grieved for his boy years ago, after the boy had stormed out of Kash and Z’s home, swearing that he was the Nonagon now and they couldn’t change that, couldn’t change what destiny had in store for him. He looks at Molly now, so different from that angry young boy—leaning against a shabby wizard, his feelings all written across his face. He looks so young, still.

“You don’t have to be sorry for anything,” says Kashaw. “You’re alive. That’s what matters to me.” Everything else he can deal with later. Fuck, he’s got to tell Z. “What happened, anyway? How’d you end up dead now?”

Molly flinches back, but composes himself quickly enough as Caleb gently lowers the both of them down onto the ground. Nott crowds in then, clambering onto Caleb’s lap, and Beau, after a moment, walks over and sits casually down near Molly, near enough to reach out and touch him.

Keg doesn’t move to join them. She sits down near Kashaw instead, and he absently reaches out to heal her a little.

“It’s kind of a long story,” says Molly.

“So make it shorter,” says Kashaw.

“Right,” says Molly. “Have you heard of this group called the Iron Shepherds?”

**Author's Note:**

> bonus scene:
> 
> "Zahra Hydris is your _mom_ ," says Jester, delighted.
> 
> Molly swirls the drink around in his cup and says, "Noooot _exactly_?"
> 
> They're celebrating their victory, for once—they badly need to celebrate, because it's just been one shit thing after another, and they deserve this much. Molly's still trying to shake off the nightmares that keep popping up, although that solid punch to the face of the fucker who killed him helped.
> 
> And Jester is grinning up at him, as Zahra and Kashaw dance together under the moonlight. Blessedly not naked, as they kept jokingly insinuating before Molly shooed them out.
> 
> "That's so cool, it's like we're related!" she says.
> 
> Molly stops. "I'm sorry, what?" he says.
> 
> "They once took on a job guarding my mom," says Jester, happily. "She always said they were her best guards and her best _guards_." Her eyebrow waggle says more than Molly ever wanted to know about Zahra and Kashaw's sex life.
> 
> Molly stares at Jester, then tosses back the rest of his drink. "I've missed you very much, Jester," he says, kissing her on the forehead, "now please stop talking or I'll have to steal Nott's flask."


End file.
